Variety denomination: The present invention relates to a new and distinct cultivar of Begonia rex plant botanically known as Begonia rex hybrid, referred to by the name of xe2x80x98Star of Davidxe2x80x99.
The new Begonia rex was discovered and selected by the Inventor in a controlled environment in Oviedo, Fla., in 1998, and is at present growing in a controlled environment in Leesburg, Fla.
The Inventor has been growing a Begonia he collected in Venezuela in 1983. That plant is not known by the Inventor to be patented, nor is it known to be the subject of a pending U.S. patent application. In 1998 the Inventor noticed a sport on the original cultivar, consisting of a single stem that developed significantly larger flower clusters. The clusters on this stem routinely contained forty or more flowers, compared with the six to eight normally produced by the original parent plant that had been collected. The Inventor selectively propagated the stem (sport) by vegetative stem cuttings. The sport was discovered and propagated at 5344 Rockinghorse Place, Oviedo, Fla. 32765. All the resulting plants have maintained the large flower clusters like the original sport. The Inventor has been privately propagating and evaluating the inventive plant for 4-5 years. The Inventor has in that time determined that the improved traits were stable, the instant plant retaining its distinctive characteristics and reproducing true to type in successive generations.
The parent cultivar may be described as follows:
Flowers: 10-14 flowers per cyme (female) and 4-6 flowers per cyme (male), with 2-3 cymes per adult plant. Adult and juvenile plants had the same small number of flowers per cyme. Perennial; 2-3 cymes per plant per year for many years observed.
Plant form: Upright and mounding, with stems of 1-cm width at one year.
Branching: Mostly upright, with stem supports added as needed.
Growth habit: Slow 10-12 in./in. to maturity in 6 mo in 3-gallon container; 24 in./year.
Disease and pest resistance: No diseases nor root rot ever observed. Insects not attracted.
Cold resistance: Cover needed at temperatures below 32xc2x0 F.
As described in (W. B. Zomlefer, Guide to Flowering Plant Families, Univ. North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994, p. 124; A. Huxley, ed., New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening, Vol. 4, Macmillan, London, 1992), the Begonia (Begoniaceae) comprises 900+ species of usually succulent herbs, shrubs, or climbers. There are more than 100 species and 10,000 hybrids and cultivars of Begonia cultivated as ornamentals grown for attractive foliage and flowers.
Begonia roots are fibrous, rhizomatous, or tuberous, with the tubers becoming dormant in the winter. The stems are often swollen, conspicuously jointed, and woody, extending up to 2 m and above. Alternatively, the stems may be soft and herbaceous, or absent, with the leaves forming a rosette at the apex of the rhizome.
Begonia leaves are alternate and petiolate, and are usually asymmetric, with one side shorter than the other, resembling an elephant""s ear. The leaves may be simple to lobed, or occasionally compound, having a margin that is irregularly toothed, glabrous to hispid, with a surface smooth to rugose or bullate, membranous to coriaceous, often brightly marked red, purple, brown, grey, to white.
There are two stipules, often large, membranous, often persistent, sometimes caducous. Inflorescence comprises an axillary or terminal cyme or raceme, erect or pendent, with few to many flowers present. The flowers are unisexual, with male and female adjacent in inflorescence. The flowers are sometimes dimorphic in size, with colors comprising red, pink, white, and yellow to orange, and may be bicolored and double in cultivation.
The corolla segments (tepals) are 2+2 in male flowers and 2-6 in females; they are of different sizes but are similarly colored. They are sometimes hairy externally, glabrous in the inner surface, waxy in texture, and of crystalline appearance. The stamens are numerous, massed at the center, or connate below, forming a tube, with yellow anthers. The ovary is inferior, 3-4 locular, many ovules, three styles, and free or connate below. The stigmata are lobed and convolute, or capitate. The fruit is a loculicidal capsule, usually winged. The seeds are very numerous, minute, and oblong. The plants reproduce vegetatively from groups of small tubers, often found in the leaf axils, or by adventitious buds that readily form on detached leaves in contact with moist soil. The buds arise on the upper leaf surface from a meristem that develops within the callus formed over the wound.
The begonia is typically found in the tropics and subtropics, in damp, wooded areas, especially in the Americas, with most diversity in South America. In the United States and Canada, there are two spp. of Begonia.
The majority of species in cultivation are grown as potplants, using a free-draining peat-based potting medium with a pH of 6.0-7.0 and with at least some shade from direct sunlight. Most begonias are frost tender.
The present invention, the xe2x80x98Star of Davidxe2x80x99 Begonia rex cultivar, is a new Begonia variety that is disease-resistant, resists root rot, tolerates freezes, is a perennial, and does not attract insects.